A question for those that do their own videos, what spec of PC are you using, and more specifically what graphics card? Despite upgrading my PC to the following:

AMD Athlon X2 2.5GHz
4 GB RAM
Windows 7 64bit
ASUS 4350 graphics card with 512MB of RAM

The footage I shoot plays fine in VLC etc, but as soon as I pull it into editing software it grinds to a halt and preview playback is very jerky. I’ve tried Adobe Premiere, Sony Vegas, Magix Video Edit and all of them have the same problem. I’ve got the latest video card drivers and codecs but nothing’s helping. Windows Movie Maker is ok, but the downside is I lose the HD quality when I output it.

I suspect the graphics card is the weak link but I’m not sure what the minimum requirements are. I guess I’m looking at one with more RAM and 1GB options vary from £50 to £500, with a few 2GB ones though they aren’t that common.

I’m interested to hear what others are using from a software and PC spec point of view.

Sounds like you need a *much* higher spec machine, for editing HD content.

Adobe Premier is notoriously hard on resources – the fact it’s now 64bit only, should be an indication. 12 or 16GB RAM is not uncommon for vid editing workstations.

Very fast hard disks – even if you only use them for working data (an SSD or WD Raptor drive).

….

Case – COOLERMASTER ELITE 310 BLUE CASE

Processor (CPU) – AMD PHENOM II X6 1090T (3.20GHz/9MB CACHE/AM3/)

Motherboard – ASUS® M4N98TD EVO: DDR3, 2-Way SLI, SATA 3.0GB/s

Memory (RAM) – 8GB SAMSUNG DDR3 DUAL-DDR3 1333MHz (2 X 4GB)

Graphics Card – 1GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX460 PCI EXPRESS – DirectX® 11, 3D Vision Ready

Memory – 1st Hard Disk – 1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE
1st Hard Disk Partitions 100GB, 400GB, 500GB

2nd Hard Disk 1TB WD CAVIAR GREEN WD10EARS, SATA 3 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE

1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive – 24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM

Power Supply – 600W Quiet 80 PLUS Quad Rail PSU + 120mm Case Fan

Processor Cooling – SUPER QUIET 22dBA TRIPLE COPPER HEATPIPE CPU COOLER

Sound Card – ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)

Operating System – Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit

runs premiere pro cs5 fine 🙂

arsebiscuits

Only upgraded the mother board a couple of months ago. Looks like another upgrade on the horizon

I use an i5 iMac with 8GB of RAM for Premiere CS5. I’m also using a fast firewire HD for scratch disks. Seems to work pretty well.

My machine is pretty outdated but runs Premiere CS5, Vegas, Maya, 3Dsmax, After Effects, Photoshop etc without any problems at all 🙂 Basic spec is:

Q6600 processor (which I still need to try overclocking!)
4gb OCZ ram
8800GT 512mb graphics card
7200rpm hdd (250gb which is not nearly enough for loads of video)
Abit IP35 Pro motherboard
Win7 64 bit

Also runs a hackintosh fine so I’m starting to use FCP more as I think it’s better than Premiere now I’ve spent more time with it. Only PITA is having to transcode to ProRes if you want hassle-free editing, Premiere can usually cope with the files straight off the camera.

Doesn’t Premiere let you use lo-res SD proxies for what is effectivly an offline edit and then replace proxies with hi-res HD for final render like After Effects does?
There is no reason to have to use the HD stuff while figuring out your edits. Obviously you can use a lower spec machine then

yeah just right click in the preview window and you can chose the preview resolution. 🙂

Is this native AVCHD you are using?

Download the 30 day trial of Edius, it copes with more native video formats than any other NLE.
If your PC is still not performing then transcode into CanopusHQ, there is no quality loss and its much easier on the CPU.

I use a i2600K CPU overclocked, 6Gb RAM, Quadro 1Gb video card, SSD system drive and a 2Tb RAID0 array for video files. OS is Win7 64.

Is this native AVCHD you are using?

I believe so. One of the problems I’m running up against, and this seems common, is that a lot of the editing software packages don’t like the file formats a lot of consumer camcorders use. Vegas for example refuses to import the files created by the camera (Toshiba S20) and I need to convert them to MPEG before it’ll import.

premiere seems to handle avchd fine straight from the camera from my experience…

Upgrade your RAM, and you could think of getting a certified Adobe Premiere video card, which will take a load of your processor for FX. If you’re editing and viewing more than one HD video at a time, you may want to upgrade to a SSD or RAID 0 config.

As someone else said, you can preview at 50%/25% resolution, so it uses less power, I still struggle.

I’m running a AMD 4500+, with 4Gb RAM and 1GB cheap GFX card, while I can edit HD and add an overlay, my machine struggles when trying to add any other video over the top, even an SD quality video. 😐

AVCHD is CPU heavy, fast discs and RAM won’t make much difference.

Transcode it to a non-compressed format and it will edit OK.

Edius is ideal for this and its not a system heavy application.

Edius 6 will let you edit in a proxy mode with reduced quality monitoring for slower systems.

Max motherboard capacity is 4Gb 🙁

It’s either a new processor, new graphics card or new motherboard and graphics card

yeah just right click in the preview window and you can chose the preview resolution

Yep same in Sony Vegas, just crank down the quality of the preview till it is watchable. It’s only the final render that takes hours (I’m on a fairly similar spec machine to the OP).

I use Edius 6 and can edit one video track with AVCHD file on my PC without stuttering, as Everywhen said you can edit in proxy mode, but with Edius you can also convert the AVCHD file back to an AVI file, a much bigger file but easier on the CPU..

I’ve tried dropping the resolution in the preview but it’s still jerky.

you can download HD codecs or whatever they are called for movie maker, google it!